The present invention relates generally to hay harvesting machines, commonly referred to as mower-conditioners, and more particularly, to an improved system for determining the proper amount of lubricant to be placed within the rotary cutterbar of a disc mower-conditioner.
Mower-conditioners have been provided for the harvesting of hay for a number of years. A mower-conditioner severs standing crop material and conveys the severed crop material rearwardly into a conditioning mechanism without depositing the severed crop upon the ground. A disc mower-conditioner is provided with a disc cutterbar having a number of transversely spaced rotatable cutter members operable to sever standing crop material by an impact action. A conditioning mechanism mounted rearwardly of the disc cutterbar is operable to receive and condition severed crop material.
A disc cutterbar includes a generally hollow support bar in which is housed a drive transmission mechanism, generally in the form of a series of intermeshing gears. The disc cutters are rotatably supported on the support bar and connected to a corresponding gear to affect rotation thereof when the drive transmission mechanism is rotatably driven by a primary drive mechanism. For the proper operation of the drive transmission gears, a correct amount of lubricant must be present within the support bar. Typically, the support bar is considerably wider and longer than it is thick, making the correct depth of lubricant a very critical value since too much lubricant will cause overheating and too little lubricant will not provide adequate lubrication for the drive transmission gears.
Further complicating the determination of the proper lubricant within the cutterbar is the difficulty in determining when the cutterbar is properly leveled in both the side-to-side direction and the front to rear direction. Furthermore, because of the weight of the cutterbar and its length, the support bars are prone to sagging near the center resulting in the lubricant being non-uniformly distributed within the support bar even when the cutterbar is properly leveled. Accordingly, not only is leveling the support bar in two directions inconvenient, it can also be unreliable as it is dependent upon the condition of the cutterbar being serviced.